Cynet All-In-One Security Platform Hands-On Review

A hands-on review tutorial of Cynet Autonomous Security Platform for blocking all types of security attacks on any network:

Cynet is changing the face of the security industry with the first Autonomous Security Platform that consolidates all aspects of the internal environment protection in a single interface.

The autonomous platform is threat-agnostic, converging all the technologies and capabilities (including endpoint protection, EDR, network analytics, UBA, and vulnerability management) to answer the visibility, prevention, detection and response needs of an any-sized organization.

At the same time, it is easy and intuitive to deploy and manage. By that, the platform eliminates the need for complex multi-product security stacks, as well as the dependency on a highly skilled security workforce.

Cynet built a simple platform which is easy to deploy and use.

It provides broad visibility across the network, endpoints, files, and users; protects against a very wide range of attacks including common as well as advanced, multi-layered attacks; and provides a team of security experts available 24/7 which in turn complements whatever expertise you have in place.

The immediate value that Cynet provides is its comprehensive visibility into the organization, including network sources and destination, installed applications, host inventory, and unpatched vulnerabilities.

Cynet provides a network display of your internal environment with risky hosts marked in red and is clickable for a deeper look.

Figure 3: Network Map

The other insights provided upon installation are centered around vulnerability management and compliance, in 4 main areas:

#1) OS Updates: Cynet checks the installed Windows patch and raises an indication if the patches are missing. In addition, Cynet creates an inventory of the installed patches.

#2) Unauthorized Applications: Cynet provides a list of blacklisted applications that can be customized and alerts if such applications are found.

Figure 4: Vulnerability Management: Unauthorized Applications

#3) Outdated Applications: Cynet checks if a list of outdated application versions is installed, and if so, it alerts if anything is found.

#4) Security Policy Validation: Cynet checks if a list of installed agents exists on the endpoints and are currently running and thereby alerts if anything is missing.

In addition, for correlation capabilities, the vulnerability management data is available via the “Forensic” screen for creating any type of report, query, etc.

Using the data gathered, Cynet's Forensics screen immediately allows the users to search across files, hosts, users, and sockets. Every object is clickable to easily understand its history.

For Example, you can search for common security issues such as users that have not replaced a password, what files are called upon startup, and what applications are running on your endpoints, and you can look for unauthorized access to applications using network visibility.

Figure 5: A list of hosts that were not updated over a specific period of time.

Figure 6: All files running on system start-up.

Figure 7: All users who haven't changed their password during a specific period and logged in over the last week.

Figure 8: Save the search as a policy to trigger an alert or for future use.

As a part of the simplicity of the platform, every object is clickable and once clicked, all data is presented in a simple way on a single timeline, with all the associated history and objects.

Cynet Detection

Cynet's approach to security is about convergence. Namely, Cynet not only brings together detection, correlation and automation but unlike point solutions, Cynet also converges its analysis across endpoints, for users, files and networks.

While seeing a live demo of the capabilities for the first time, it's impressive to see the variety of alerts that can be generated – such as malicious behavior, exploitation, ransomware, lateral movement, brute force, user login anomalies, DNS Tunneling, privilege escalation, credential theft and much more.

In turn, these are the result of the multiple detection layers that Cynet includes.

Cynet prioritizes the alerts and makes them easy to understand and act upon by pre-correlating all the related objects into one single view of the alert, highlighting actionable information, and presenting additional information and recommendations with a click of a button.

Everything is wrapped in a simple, self-explanatory interface that can be used by anyone with a minimal level of expertise.

Figure 12: Alert

In addition to the comprehensive detection, Cynet claims to have a very low false-positive ratio, as a result of its multi-layered approach.

Automated Response

For each alert that Cynet creates, the user can create and customize his own automatic remediation rule, in order to improve the incident response process and the prevention of real-time threats.

Figure 14: Automated Response

As part of this, Cynet provides a comprehensive rule creation mechanism that allows the user to customize the action according to the organization's needs, such as: which group to apply the rule, whom to exclude, etc.

In addition, Cynet enables its user to tailor custom remediations, thereby chaining together various remediation actions and uploading scripts that communicate with firewall, DC, etc. for a wider response orchestration.

Figure 15: Custom Remediation Configuration

24/7 Security Team

Cynet includes CyOps – a 24/7 security operations team at no additional cost, to complement the expertise that their customers lack. What do you get? It's not a watered-down service that incurs hidden costs if you go above a certain threshold.

It's a proactive service if there is something that you should care about, a threat you missed, or if you need to perform forensics or hunt for threats when someone contacts you.

Their service includes:

Forensics: In the event of an incident, Cynet experts perform breach post mortems.

Conclusion

Cynet is banking on an industry moving from fragmentation to consolidation. From the looks of what they've assembled, they may be onto something big.

For organizations that do not have the resources and security expertise of a Fortune 500 company, Cynet is an ideal solution with its rapid deployment, single-pane-of-glass approach, and multiple technology capabilities which in turn is a real game changer.

What next? If your organization is 300 endpoints or less, then you can sign up for Cynet's SaaS free trial. If your organization is larger, then you can request a demo from Cynet's website to get a personal walkthrough of the platform.

If you give it a try, feel free to share your questions/experiences with us.